Democratic Peace Theory Essay

1852 words - 8 pages

Intro:
US Presidents have made it a goal during their term(s) in office to establish a good relationship with foreign countries and even try to improve upon existing connections with our allies. Some believe it is to prevent conflicts between the countries while others dispute that it is a threat assessment by the United States to pick and choose their friends and enemies. Preventing conflict between two democracies or countries that practice democracy is called Democratic Peace Theory. However, research has begun to show that Democratic Peace Theory is ineffective and needs to be brought to an end as a model for how international relations are formed or destroyed. Democratic Peace Theory ...view middle of the document...

Gleditsch asks the question if democracies really do keep the peace and he found out that they try to but also sometimes have problems within their own house (Gleditsch 289). This could explain why rebellions within a country usually win because the government is torn if they should quiet the rebellion or concede because they do not want to be thrown out of office.
Shouldn’t leave the “football” with a passionate fan:
Democratic Peace Theory cannot work as a solution for unsuccessful talks when it comes to foreign policy because when deciding if democracies should go to war with one another, having the citizens decide is bad because the average person does not think rationally, they think emotionally which leads to more problems. Take the Cold War of the United States against the USSR as an example of how emotions almost destroyed two nations. People were spying on their own family members out of fear of being branded a communist and the fear of nuclear annihilation was ever present danger that children were doing drills in case of nuclear fallout. Had it not been for Gorbachev assuming power in Russia and letting his people see what freedom was about through his policies, we would not be here today. Mr. Layne, author of “Kant or Can’t,” furthers the point by stating that Democracies behave differently against non-democracies (Layne 4). Democratic Peace Theory cannot be a solution to resolve foreign policy talks that are ineffective because of dignitaries being under pressure to get a result from these conversations, they might be forced to put pressure on their guest(s) to get their desired results that nullify Democratic Peace Theory because it states that Democracies don’t like to fight each other.
Liar liar pants on fire:
Nobody likes getting lied to, all the trust that was built up, gone in a second when the truth comes out and those on the outside feel the same as those on the inside, betrayed. Susan Braden looked at the track record of previous Presidents and the campaign promises they made. What she found out is that if the President could not come through with the promise, their approval numbers dropped (Braden 5). She used the example of President Bush and in his second inaugural address stated that freedom would produce peace (Braden 1). When that took too long to come through on that promise, the people and their thought on the president began to drop. Democratic Peace Theory is not successful because, like the previous example, lying does not solve the problem of creating peace; it only opens up rifts between the countries because they cannot figure out who they can trust and who to avoid.
A more recent example is what recently just happened with the unveiling of the NSA spying program. The truth about the NSA and Edward Snowden situation definitely damaged the credibility of the US because the accused, a former CIA contractor revealed that the NSA was spying and tapping the phones of their allies and in some cases important...

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